TAC Sponsor Spotlight Article — AtkinsRéalis
by Sunil Kothari, Portfolio Director – Transportation Agency Division, AtkinsRéalis and Jonathan English, Founding Principal, Infrastory Insights
There is a great deal to be optimistic about in Canadian infrastructure. Across the country, we have opportunities to renew the transportation networks we depend on and build the connections that will support future growth.
The growing capital plans of our governments demonstrate the level of attention given to Canada’s infrastructure needs – old and new. Ontario is planning more than $210 billion in infrastructure investment over ten years, $30 billion of which is investment in provincial highways, a magnitude we have not seen in generations. Québec’s ten-year plan totals $167 billion. Alberta’s 2026 capital plan allocates $28.3 billion in infrastructure over the next 3 years. At the federal level, approximately $159 billion in infrastructure spending is expected over five years.
The broader investment outlook matters too. The Investment Summit held in September brought together global investors, Canadian business leaders and public-sector representatives to mobilize long-term capital. The summit supported the federal government’s ambition to catalyze $1 trillion in total investment over five years. This means that transportation programs are advancing alongside major projects across the country. Alto is moving forward as Canada’s first high-speed rail project between Toronto and Québec City. Provinces are studying new high-speed rail opportunities, expanding electricity infrastructure and advancing transportation connections to resource-rich regions.
That is an opportunity worth preparing for. The industry can help governments and transportation agencies deliver their ambitions, and that requires collaboration at all levels to ensure delivery capacity. Two shifts are essential: recognizing relevant experience from a broader pool of professionals, and assessing the full range of capabilities and resources that firms can mobilize around project teams.
Faster delivery requires a broader approach to talent
Our nation has a substantial engineering workforce, but experienced professionals remain a finite resource. Canada employed about 65,600 civil engineers in 2023, and federal projections identify a moderate risk of labour shortage through 2033. How we recognize and mobilize that expertise deserves close attention.
Procurement has a direct influence on the talent available to a project. Requirements can be highly specific: named professionals with a particular number of years of experience, previous roles on similar projects or experience working with a specific owner. These criteria can provide owners confidence in the proposed team. They can also lead several projects to draw repeatedly on a limited group of engineers.
As capital programs grow, that becomes a practical capacity constraint. Those professionals are generally spread thin across many concurrent assignments, and their availability can change during a lengthy procurement process. Competition for the same individuals can also increase costs and move talent between firms without adding to the overall capacity available, and ultimately value, to owners.
When highly specific profile requirements concentrate opportunities among a limited number of firms with this hard-to-find talent, owners have fewer qualified delivery partners to draw on. A broader view of relevant experience could help sustain healthy, competitive bidding processes and strengthen the capacity available across their programs.
There is an opportunity to widen that pool of talent by recognizing relevant experience across sectors and regions. Transferable experience is part of that opportunity. Civil engineering spans transportation, energy, buildings, industrial and other infrastructure sectors, with duties that include preparing specifications, reviewing design work and supervising civil construction.
Consider an engineer who has prepared specifications and supervised civil construction on an energy project. Those skills could be relevant to a transportation assignment involving comparable tasks. Assessing that experience against the responsibilities of the role could give owners access to additional qualified talent. The overall team would still need transportation-specific knowledge and appropriate technical oversight, with the engineer’s skills contributing within that structure. This is something that has been seen before: with a renaissance of rail and transit work in the past decades, professionals from the roads and bridges sector were welcomed to take on significant roles. A similar recognition of the experience is now imperative for overall program delivery success in the roads and bridges sector.
This is especially important when investment cycles create talent shortages in one sector while another has expertise available. Recognizing qualified professionals’ transferable experience would allow projects to draw more extensively on Canadian talent from across regions and sectors. It would also help Canadian professionals build cross-sector expertise, strengthening domestic delivery capacity while making them more competitive at home and internationally. The same principle applies to specialists within a firm’s broader network. Giving firms greater flexibility to assemble teams could help direct available expertise to the projects and sectors where demand is strongest.
RFP requirements could focus less on narrowly defined profiles and specific past assignments, and more on whether proposed professionals have the skills and relevant experience to assume the responsibilities of the role and deliver the expected outcomes. Allowing firms to demonstrate how comparable experience meets those requirements would broaden the available talent pool while maintaining clear standards for technical quality and accountability. But accessing more qualified professionals is only part of the solution; the next challenge is mobilizing the broader expertise and capabilities needed to support them and deliver each project.
Mobilizing broader expertise around each project
A broader pool of talent creates more options. The next step is bringing the right combination of expertise together around each project, with clear responsibility for technical quality and delivery.
Transportation projects increasingly require expertise across planning, design, environmental assessment, construction and operations. Beyond the qualifications of the individuals assigned to a mandate, owners should consider the multidisciplinary capabilities and specialist resources supporting the proposed team. This provides a more complete picture of how the team will respond to the project’s needs throughout its lifecycle.
This is where firm-level capabilities can play an important role. In addition to evaluating the qualifications of key individuals, owners can consider the organizational resources supporting those individuals: specialist networks, multidisciplinary expertise, delivery experience on comparable projects and the ability to draw on resources from different regions when required. Together, these capabilities can help project teams respond to changing needs throughout the project lifecycle while maintaining clear accountability for outcomes.
AtkinsRéalis brings this breadth of transportation expertise spanning roads, bridges, rail and transit, supported by advisory, engineering, design, project delivery and operational capabilities. Our Canadian footprint allows us to work with clients across the country while combining local knowledge with global expertise.
This approach can be seen in major transportation projects such as the Samuel De Champlain Bridge corridor in Montréal. Working as part of the Signature on the Saint Lawrence consortium, AtkinsRéalis contributed expertise across design, construction, financing, operations and maintenance. The project also drew on geotechnical and environmental specialists, whose work helped inform key design decisions throughout delivery. For owners delivering ambitious capital programs, the potential benefit of a broader view of individual qualifications combined with a whole view means access to a broader range of expertise, points of view and delivery capabilities. Canada is entering a defining period of infrastructure investment. Across the country, governments are advancing projects that will connect communities, strengthen trade corridors, improve mobility and support long-term economic growth. It is imperative that owners access top talent and innovative practices.
The opportunity before us extends beyond renewing aging assets. It is an opportunity to build the infrastructure that will help shape Canada’s next chapter, improving how people move, access opportunities and connect to the resources and markets that drive prosperity.
Meeting that moment will require making full use of the talent, expertise and delivery capacity available across our industry. By broadening access to experience and drawing on the full capabilities of qualified firms, owners can strengthen their ability to deliver increasingly ambitious programs.
With deep transportation expertise, teams working in communities across Canada and the ability to mobilize talent in multiple disciplines, AtkinsRéalis is ready to help governments and transportation agencies turn Canada’s infrastructure ambitions into lasting connections, economic opportunity and prosperity for generations to come.